The What-If Game

Science fiction is fiction in which the story has a strong foundation in science, most often related to outer space or what may occur in the future. The category has expanded to include stories set in the past (think mythology) or the present (alternate contemporary realities; think vampires). A contingent advocating for the many variations of the Fantasy genre also acknowledge a cross-over. Sometimes magic is just science we (or characters in the story) don't understand, so Fantasy can be included with Science Fiction works on the shelving of your local bookstore. It's all really a kind of reality show, a game of possibilities akin to Dungeons and Dragons.

Another name for this game is What If. For example, what if the Black Death in Europe during the 14th century killed not one-third of the population but ninety percent of the population? I recently started reading Kim Stanley Robinson's The Years of Rice and Salt which explores the possibilities that follow this premise. This what-if premise becomes a thought-experiment, obviously, because it did not actually happen. A thought-experiment can still be entertaining and educational. In Cixin Liu's The Three-Body Problem trilogy, we ponder the idea of what if scientists on Earth were to make contact with an alien race and then help that alien race conquer Earth? Both stories start with historic moments in real places then pose the fateful question that changes everything: What if...?

In earlier blog posts I've maintained that even contemporary literary stories rely on a what-if foundation. The author chooses the setting and the characters and gives them a situation. A relationship story like Francine Prose's novella Three Pigs in Five Days begins with the what-if premise of the guy sending his girlfriend solo to Paris and booking her into a whorehouse set for renovation into a tourist hotel. What would she think of that? Why did he do that? What if he had booked her into the usual kind of elegant hotels they always stay in when together? One what-if story goes left, the other what-if story goes right. In my own contemporary literary novel A Beautiful Chill, I put two different characters together in a place where certain rules apply (a college campus) and ask them to figure out the what-if conundrum they face when they bump into each other. A famous Russian novelist (Dostoevsky, I think) once stated that he liked to put different characters together and see what they would talk about. The same factor is at work: What if...?

This is what I enjoy about writing stories. I like to suppose. I like to play what-if games. What if a rich, handsome, young CEO invites the young woman interviewing him for her publisher over to see the "pleasure room" in his mansion? That's a game, certainly. What if she says "no thanks"? What if she goes there and it's him who likes being dominated? Anyway, my what-if games do not require pleasure rooms - unless that is where you read. But I digress....

I think other people would enjoy playing along, so I write my ideas out as novels. It's my way of playing the game. Putting a puzzle together. My latest novel, Year of the Tiger - which began as my first novel many, many years ago (but don't worry, it's been heavily revised to bring it up to my present high standards) - is a prime example of the what-if thought-experiment. In the system of reincarnation, what if a soul was somehow split between two bodies such that they were mentally connected? What would that be like? How would that conundrum play out? What implications emerge from that strange situation actually being real? (Who knows that it hasn't occurred somewhere in the world at some time? Nothing comes up in Google.)

(More on anthropomorphism in this blog post.)

However, with my forthcoming novel, The Masters' Riddle, classified as science fiction, I take the what-if game one huge step further. From imagining what it would be like to be a man whose mind is connected to the mind of a man-eating tiger and vice-versa, I move to imagining what it would be like to be a non-human being from another world. Yes, we have some examples of that already. I can think of the film E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Although we don't get to experience his thoughts and feelings directly from his (her?) point of view, we are invited to see the situation of being stranded on Earth from E.T.'s point of view via third-person exposition. But what-if our protagonist were a non-human? How would he/she/it/they see the situation?

So I get to play in the garden of God, creating bio-forms, geographies with flora and fauna, an astrological arrangement, and the history, mythology, culture, and language of that being's home. This might be enough to keep me occupied and out of other people's business for quite a while, granted. However, because I'm also creating a what-if scenario, I put my character as the lead in the story of his capture by a mysterious race of invaders. What would this non-human character do? It's another thought-experiment, but this time thinking as some alien would think - or might think; who can know for sure? He (she?) might have to escape confinement first. Then perhaps try to fight back. Or maybe focus on just returning home - if that is even possible. More and more what-if twists. The fun can only be expanded by adding more non-human beings from other worlds, each with their own backgrounds, bodies, languages, and so on. I'm getting giddy just thinking about the creative possibilities!

All right, take a breath. More on the sordid history of writing The Masters' Riddle (mind the apostrophe placement) next time. As of this posting I'm still looking at a late June, early July launch. 

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